Inside Social Games

These days, third party developers have created everything from social networking, microtransactional, and multiplayer APIs to incorporate into web games, allowing game developers to focus more on design as opposed to infrastructure or backend support. To this end a company by the name of Gameyola is looking to help developers incorporate social gaming features through its Flash based API, turning stand-alone Flash games into social, multiplayer titles.

The pitch to developers is that with the Gameyola API, developers can gain more distribution on Facebook and other social networks. Using a single line of code, the API can connect games to what the company calls its “viral distribution engine” and can distribute games both through the Gameyola portal as well as across major social networks.

Once set up, developers then merely have to submit their game to Gameyola to have it hosted using the company’s Amazon Cloud servers. The company’s games portal has approximately 7 million users across all their apps, and it is not exclusive. If developers so choose, they can also make use of MochiAds or other advertising networks.

There has also been talk of providing microtransactional API as well through the Gameyola platform, which will probably be similar to the API provided by other competing companies such as Nonoba. Unfortunately, however, the Gameyola API only supports AS2 at the moment. That isn’t to say AS3 compatibility isn’t on the way, but something to be aware of since it may not be included for a while.

Nonetheless, while the service doesn’t feel fully flushed out yet, it is on a good path. However, if they intend to compete with other third party platforms, there is a lot of work yet to be done.